


Saboteur

by mosylu



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, We're All Dorky Teenagers When It Comes to Love, You gotta do what you gotta do
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-02
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-05-04 12:27:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5334080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mosylu/pseuds/mosylu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cisco's tech is built to take a beating, but somehow everything that he's sent to the Arrow Cave gets wrecked really fast. And then he's just gotta come fix it in person.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Saboteur

**Author's Note:**

> Gruzinkerlady on Tumblr prompted me with "'good enough' for blackvibe?? :D"
> 
> It’s been a long time since I wrote any Blackvibe. I apologize for any inaccuracies - I don’t watch Arrow.

“What did I do to deserve this?”

Laurel almost dropped her mask. “What?”

Cisco waved a hand at the Canary Cry, laid out like a bird with a broken wing on a table in the Arrow Cave (give it up, Ollie, that’s its name forever now). “What happened here?”

“I told you,” she said. “I fell.”

He raised his brows at her. “You … fell.”

“Yeah.” She felt dumb. Fell? It was one step up from a twisted ankle. 

She should have made up something better. More bad-ass. Somebody had throat-punched her. Something. Although the obvious lack of a crushed windpipe might have put the lie to that. 

“Look, I know it’s probably obnoxious to have to come here all the time to fix our stuff - ”

“Hey, no, Barry will run me over whenever, he doesn’t care. He gets to hang out with Oliver and commiserate on how incredibly difficult it is, being heroic.” Cisco gently took the cracked case apart, shaking the little shards of plastic out of the electronics. “But it’s amazing. I build these things to be sturdy, but somehow, everything here has the lifespan of an anemic mayfly.”

She shrugged. “It's a dangerous life we lead.”

“Uh-huh,” he said. “Nothing like Central City. I mean, we’ve just got interdimensional breaches, talking gorillas, and freaking man sharks.”

“Wait, what? Man sharks?”

“You missed the man shark? Hoooo! You gotta hear this.”

She leaned over the table, smiling, watching his face light up.

“Okay, so - wait. You never answered my question.”

She sat back, disappointed. “What question would that be?”

He waved the remains of the case at her. “The pattern of cracks on here suggests a single point of impact, with a lot of pressure behind it. Like a knife.”

“If you say so.”

“Or a stiletto heel,” he said.

“A - what?” She tucked her feet, in their high-heeled boots, further under her chair. “Why would you say that?”

He raised a brow. “And a lot of the repairs I’ve been making have suffered the same kind of thing. Single points of impact, or like it’s been dropped on a stone floor - ” He glanced at the concrete floor of the Arrow Cave. “It looks deliberate.”

“Of course it does. Bad guys see our amazing tech helping us out and try to break it.”

“Uh-huh,” he said slowly. “So - it’s not one of you sabotaging it?”

“What? No! Nooooo. No.” Too many _no_ ’s, she thought, suppressing a wince. If this had been court, she would have taken herself apart on the witness stand.

His eyes narrowed a little, as if he were thinking the same thing.

She tossed her hair. “Haha! Why would we do that?” Oh. Oh lord. Total miscalculation. How did this man with his sunshine smile somehow transform her into a high school freshman stuttering in front of the cutest nerd in debate club?

“Thaaaat’s what I’m asking,” he said slowly. “Did I do something to tick you off? Was it the picture?”

She blinked. “The picture?”

“Yeah, my fanboy moment. When we first met? The picture I bamboozled out of you? I mean, I’ve, um, I noticed you kind of look annoyed in that picture.”

“That was my mean face,” she said. “My ferocious Black Canary expression that sends all the bad guys fleeing in terror from my wrath.”

She’d wanted to smile at him, not snarl at the camera. But he’d been so excited over how tough and badass Black Canary was. So she’d made her toughest badass face.

“So you didn’t mind it?”

“Of course not.” She’d kept her own copy, just to look at his smile on a bad day. Honestly. It was one step up from mooning over a  boy in the yearbook.

“Then why are you busting my tech?”

“It’s not just me!” she said, and felt heat wash up over her face. But it was true. Felicity helped. A lot. And didn’t make fun of her _at all_ , that was very important.

He stabbed a finger at her. “Aha! A confession! But, why?” he asked piteously. “Seriously, did I do something? Am I too obnoxious when I geek out? Did I distract you the last time I was here and I helped Felicity out on the mikes? Whatever it is, can’t I just apologize?”

“No,” she said, and watched his face fall. “No! I didn’t mean it like that. I - ” Oh, Laurel. Time to ovary up and confess your sins. “Yes. I am sabotaging your tech, but no, it’s not because I don’t like you. Kind of the opposite.”

“The - opposite. You do? Like me?”

She shuffled and squirmed and skidded past that to her next point. “So  - um - I noticed how fast you came over here to fix the Canary Cry, and Oliver’s suit, and well, I guess I thought that was a pretty surefire way of getting … to … see you … more often.” The sentence devolved into a mutter, directed at her own knees.

He blinked a few times.

She considered moving to Nairobi. Or Beijing. Yes. Beijing was much farther away.

“You didn’t think I’d come if you just asked?”

“Well. You’re busy. Man sharks and interdimensional gorillas and whatnot. You need a good reason to come all the way here.”

“A better reason than you saying, ‘Hey Cisco, I wanna see your goofy face’?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Your face is not goofy.”

“You ever think that maybe I could email Felicity or Ray the schematics of all your tech? Maybe Skype in to have a look at the damage and remote-print a new case or something?”

“You can do that?”

“I can totally do that. But I don’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I like seeing you too.”

“Oh,” she said softly, watching color trickle up over his cheekbones. “So you’re saying if I really did just call and say, ‘Hey, Cisco, I want to see your face this weekend’ - ”

“Yeah,” he said, his smile beaming out at her, warming her from the toes up. “I mean, you’re right, I am busy. And you’re busy. But - that would be more than good enough.”

FINIS


End file.
